OzIdeas Home Social Innovation Political and Economic Life-style

Education Ideas Literacy Spelling Writing Systems

Spelling reform for International English

ALTERNATIVE TO THE FIRST ENTRY ON SPELLING REFORM IN WIKIPEDIA August 2006

The present entry on Spelling Reform in Wikipedia starts out with particular assumptions about reform and what is possible.

Here is an alternative introduction that starts from scratch and tries to be more comprehensive.

_______________

English spelling needs improvement. It is a major contributor to illiteracy, semi-literacy and school failure despite massive financial resources spent on teaching, research and remediation. Is is proven to slow down literacy learning , to several years behind countries with consistent spellings. Most people cannot spell well, and too many cannot read efficiently. Its too idiosyncratic spelling is a major reason why English will lose its position as the world's lingua franca , which it inherited for political and commercial reasons.   The rest of the world has problems learning two English languages , the spoken and the written, when it should be possible to learn the one from the other. For over 200 yeas English spelling has been a social oppression used to screen out from social mobility those with fewer educational advantages and opportunities and less linguistic ability to maser its peculiarities. Literacy raises intelligence, and functional illiteracy is costly for society as well as individuals.

Most other modern languages (also see here and here) have made major or minor improvements to their writing systems, showing that it can be done.  

English spelling is 80% regular for readers.  It is less so for writers, according to how many rules they have internalised. It is hardest for learners, in view of its many exceptions. There are over 280 different ways to spell around 19 vowel spelllings aone.

The unpredictable spellings could be systematized too, if common assumptions are challenged. Most scientific breakthrus have resulted through challenging assumptions that everyone else has taken unquestioned. The unpredictable 20% could be systematized too, if common assumptions are challenged. It must be realised that the spelling is not the language - it is a tool to represent the language in writing, and it can be improved without wrecking its representation of history and culture.

The first misleading assumption - that the spelling is the language. It is not. Spelling is a tool, like any other tool in information technology. Its purpose is to represent the language in writing, and it can be improved without wrecking its representation of history and culture. We can see this in the writing systems of other languages.

It is a false assumption that English spellin does not need improvement.   It is shown to slow down literacy learning , and is a major contributor to illiteracy, semi-literacy and school failure despite massive financial resources spent on teaching, research and remediation. Most people cannot spell well, and too many cannot read efficiently. Its idiosyncratic spelling is a major reason why English can lose its position as the world's lingua franca, which it inherited for political and commercial reasons. The rest of the world has problems learning two English languages , the spoken and the written. It should be possible to learn the one from the other. For over 200 years English spelling has been a social oppression used to screen out from social mobility those who have fewer educational advantages and opportunities and less linguistic ability to matser its peculiarities. Literacy raises intelligence, and so much functional illiteracy is costly for society as well as individuals.

Why English spelling has not been improved.   Dr Samuel Johnson in his 1755 Dictionary tried to use origins of words to guide their spellings. Many proposals for reform since then are currently impracticable because they disregard present readers and would lose our present heritage of print that is in international use. There is more in print in English than in any other language. It is usually the first language for translation from any other, so that it is a world heritage we have. Until there is a breakthrough to a completely different sort of writing system that can cross languages, like Chinese but without its difficulties, it is not possible for English alone to set up a new alphabet as Bernard Shaw desired. 'Spelling as you speak' , phonemically, meets dialect problems, although you can devise new phonemic spelling systems for English in an afternoon, and thousands have done so. The English initial teaching alphabet experiment, i.t.a., failed for many reasons, not only because of its new script, methods of introduction and inappropriate Whole Word and Whole Language methods of teaching reading.    Lists of rules are also popular among reformers, who usually try to regularize the most common spelling patterns. Noah Webster , US President Theodore Roosevelt and others have introduced lists of re-spellings, with limited success.

Curiously, cognitive psychologists, linguists, and educators have not yet devoted academic research to try to improve the spelling system , although vast resources have been spent trying to identify what is defective in those who fail to learn it, since dyslexia is a greater problem in English language countries than others with similar educational resources but more consistent writing systems.

Yet we now have the knowledge that is needed to maximise the advantages of present spelling as well as to remove its disadvantages. In recent years, research psychologists have identified the cognitive processes in how reading and writing are acquired and used, and the needs of readers, writers and learners , which are both similar and different, in their visual and auditory processing. This knowledge could now be applied on principles of human engineering to better fit the task to the users and learners who have such difficulty with it now.

Changes in English spelling in everyday use are bypassing orthodoxy. SMS text messaging has been taken up easily and rapidly by millions using mobile phone. Spelling accuracy is losing its primacy in emails, students' writing, and even exams. Deliberate simplifications are made in music lyrics, and advertising. The less difficult spellings in English pidgins give them a practical advantage over regular English for education and communication in developing countries despite the advantages of international communication that standard English can give.   The general public is also more open to the idea of spelling change, although still dubious about what it could be, since familiarity is essential to reading comfortably.

Back to Ozideas website pages on spelling reform issues

  Back to Ozideas Home Page